Category Archives: Writing

Term three has absolutely flown by and our grade three students have done a fantastic job at applying themselves, working hard and continuing to show exemplary behaviour across the school. Here’s a short overview of what we learnt this term.

Reading

This term, students across GK focused on three main reading strategies: making connections, visualising and questioning. Students started the term by making text-to-self (to their own experiences), text-to-text (to other books and sometimes movies or shows) and text-to-world (to their knowledge of other facts) connections to a range of different novels. The Premier’s Reading Challenge also concluded this term, well done to all the students who participated and congratulations to those who managed to complete their reading list last Friday.

It’s been especially great to see so many students genuinely enjoying their reading and, as our students have become more fluent and better at decoding larger words throughout the year, the grade threes have been discovering many new types of books, authors and genres to experiment with and truly get lost in. After all, that is our main goal: for students to fall in love with literature and independently choose to read. Be sure to keep up the reading habit over the holidays, research shows that reading levels can either improve (or even go backwards!) depending on whether children engage in just 15-20 minutes of daily reading over the school break.

Writing

The main focus this term was the very creative text type of poetry. Students wrote an extremely wide range of poems, including:

shape/concrete, where the poem is written in the shape of the object or topic (e.g. a pineapple)

cinquain and haiku, where each line has a certain number of syllables

alliteration, in which each word (or most) start with the same letter

onomatopoeia, where sound effects such as BOING! or POW! predominate

autobiographical, a poem all about the author

and many more.

Be sure to look our for your child’s very own collection of their favourite poems in their portfolio.

Mathematics

This term students took on the quite challenging topics of multiplication (groups of) and division (shared between). Students did a great job at continuing to develop their times tables, particularly the 2xs, 3xs, 5xs and 10xs; these will be particularly important in grade four and onwards so make sure you have them well-practiced. Students also learnt to multiply larger numbers, such as 5×104. We offered students $20 if they could switch a multiplication and get a different answer, for example: if 4 x 5 = 20, 5 x 4 = 20. Unfortunately, no one got the $20, and the teachers walked away with some extra lolly money! Then, students learnt about multiplication’s best friend: good old division or shared between. Did you know that 20 divided by 4, is the same as asking: 4 x __ = 20. That’s a pretty handy trick! Once you know multiplication, you pretty much know division already.

The NEXT (Numeracy Extension) group also started towards the end of the term. So far, students have been revising subtraction with renaming, particularly over zeroes, for example 1001 – 849. NEXT students have learnt two strategies for double digit multiplication with the aim of them choosing their personal favourite. Students also compared the cost of being a superhero, specifically Batman, today with prices back in 1939. Here’s a quick YouTube tutorial on the two different methods students have available to them to multiply larger numbers:

(Please note: GK uses the language of ‘renaming’ rather than ‘carrying’, so that the tens and hundreds have real place value meaning for students).

If you like, try out the Multiplication Quiz that was posted last month on the blog. A division quiz will be posted over the holidays.

Thank you as always to all the parents for all your help around the school and classroom and for all that you do for the children, day-in, day-out, to support not only their learning but their growth into magnificent young people. Most importantly, rest up and have a very happy and safe break whether you’re staying in Victoria or travelling. We look forward to seeing all the children’s smiling faces happily returning to school for an action-packed term four.

Grade three students have started studying poetry this term. One of the first poem types was Haiku: a poem with five syllables, then seven, then five again. Haikus are meant to make the reader feel that they are at the place the writer is describing, and so often elicit the five senses: feel, see, hear, smell and taste. Haikus are also often written about nature.